What We're Working On

Cheers for the what we're working on update, good to see some of those fixes!

Crackling Lance

During levelling the cast speed and initial damage are so low that it's better to use another skill until you're in maps. This doubled with the fact that you have to effectively stand still makes bosses feel terrible when you compare it to other skills which give you good damage and don't require you to stand still for seconds at a time to build up damage.

The AoE initially feels pretty good, but it's super noticeable that it seems to get name-locked or some-such and so can often fire at weird angles different to where the cursor is. It also occasionally doesn't cast when the mouse is on un-walkable terrain and some doors in Heist.

At early-mid maps with what seems like significant investment into cast speed, it can feel pretty good. The early stats need some tweaking to feel less horrid.

Is it going to up intensity when used with Spell Echo or Unleash at any point, or is this a pipe-dream?

Sigil of Power

Feels friggin' awesome. The visual and audio feedback of it gaining stages (especially full) is SICK.

I'll add my review for Hexblast. I'm playing the archmage ignite variant with elementalist in SSF. As of the time of this post, I'm level 83, still flopping around in white maps on a 5L, and have messed with heists a good amount.

I agree with most of what was listed in the large reddit thread.

On the technical side:

-The skill needs to target hexed enemies over non-hexed.

-Some enemies are still curse immune, primarily totems and banners (both lunaris temple hatred banners and syndicate banners, of which these both are also ignite immune for some reason).

-I have noticed that hexproof enemies don't get doom buildup. Not sure if this is intentional or not, but god does it feel like shit.

On the "feel" side:

-Give hexblast a better sound effect. Impending doom is great, but hexblast alone is quite sad and limp.

-Combo skills are already slow and somewhat fenagly. The additional delay of having to wait for doom bonus doesn't help that. I have no idea how to go about fixing this, but it's something to consider for future skill design.

-This is a skill that is designed to be used with curse builds, yet the entire mechanic of it revolves around removing curses. I have to cast a curse, remove it, and then cast it again. In general this isn't an issue, but as I push into content that I can't immediately one-shot with my trash gear, I find myself more and more annoyed by it, and logically it makes any sense as it's anti-synergistic.

Good things:
-Visually quite nice.
-Thematic is really cool.
-Incentivizes self-cast curses.
-Incentivizes curse builds that aren't just a support.
-Another option for raw hit chaos damage. We need more of these.
-Lets you do non-fire-based ignite without having to get specific uniques.
-Ailment stuff in general is an interesting spin on it that I like.

Fantastic news. Looking like the best league in a long time.

Some feedback: have Adiyah on the escape route during grand heists act as a stash so we can drop stuff off without leaving the instance.

Splitting steel is amazing but has some annoying anti-synergy with The Impaler Keystone. The Impaler is amazing for clear but ruins single target. change The Impaler to only proc on non-unique enemies.

The steel skills could benefit from a more "tactile" feel. More screen shake on call of steel, more visual projectile effect.

Auras with radius-related effects such as Pride and effects which grant stealth should have a clear outline to indicate AoE for more strategic gameplay.

I league started self-cast blazing salvo and I feel like it was a huge mistake, I've since rerolled to iceshot and have an infinitely easier time.

1: There arent attractive links for it while it is bugged, previously aoe and projectile damage modifiers didn't affect blazing salvo, this has since been rectified with the patch to proj damage but from my experience the aoe damage is still bugged. This cuts off the use of pinpoint + intensify, the whole reason to self-cast over mines or totems, without this support combo the available links are underwhelming, conc effect doesn't work due to the afformentioned bug, combustion support is better suited for a secondary skill, elemental focus is available but undesirable for a build that gains buffs off of hitting enemies affected by ailments, ie; inquisitor and controlled destruction, which has anti-synergy with crit builds.

2: Unleash/Spell Echo interaction with intensity mechanic, it's not there, while this is working as intended, as each support specify different things, intensity gaining on spell cast, while unleash counts as seals broken and spell echo counts as repeats, it makes self casting while taking advantage of intensity a slog, it's mostly fine with spell echo, if a bit clunky.
Using unleash however is just shooting yourself in the foot, not only are you losing the oppurtunity of scaling cast speed, for if you have too much cast speed unleash actually lowers your dps, it can't be used in conjunction with intensify + pinpoint, so it leaves me to wonder in what scenario can I use this support gem? I really want to, I really enjoy the gameplay of unleash, but I can't justify it because the damage pay off for the survivability gained just isn't enough, I see unleash used in archmage builds as a way to mitigate the mana cost but no where else. Unleash feels especially poor to use with Blazing salvo for the afformentioned bugged projectile and aoe damage and being incapable of utilising all its supports.

3: Base numbers on blazing salvo and aoe overlap. Looking at the base damage, the damage effectiveness and base projectiles, blazing salvo is comparable to fireball, for clearing this is fine, and its interaction with fork is fun and provides a satisfying fix to damage being spread too thin to effectively kill a pack, however with no additional projectile scaling the single target is not worth the danger it puts you in, especially for self-cast.
This comes down to a couple of factors:

- Simple put, without expensive gear that increases your projectile count,
you're dealing comparible damage to a fireball, assuming all the projectiles
hit, which they likely will not, while having to be dangerously close to
your target. I've heard that blazing salvo gains an additional projectile at
21 but I haven't been able to confirm this for myself nor can I find
information elsewhere, like the wiki.
aside from that, your options to increasing projectile count as
self-cast include: dying sun(which as a flask makes it less than ideal for
endgame bosses), grelwood shank and beltimber blade, and GMP, though you
would rather use pinpoint for the damage benefits, which ties back to
problems with unleash and spell echo. These things considered I feel
like I'd just rather play fireball, it may have a potential lower
base damage ceiling, it is much more consistent in that I can count on landing the projectile every time, and can do it from a MUCH safer range.

- Finecky targeting, continuing on from the single target dilemma, the "projectiles are tighter when cast closer, and spread when cast further"
works fine for clearing, the large spread combined with fork allows for easy
coverage to hit most mobs, it'll kill all whites and usually blues, but
hardly dent rares. Casting closer however is a balancing act, you have to be
in a "sweet spot", close enough to your target however not too close, due to
the arcing nature of the blazing salvo projectiles, they have to travel a
minimum distance, so if you're too close to the target, half of your
projectiles will miss, It plays very similar to Cassiopeia's Miasma
ability, from League of Legends, which used to have a similar "cast within a
ring, unable to drop point blank at your feet" sort of feel. This isn't
entirely an issue and can be played around, and can be shrugged off as
growing pains of playing with a new kind of skill, but given the current
situation with single target damage, it feels especially worse to overshoot
your small target


Maybe the problem is on me, I chose to leaguestart inquisitor, not the highest damage ascendency, but gains defensive benefits, and I doubled down on the defense with block investment and a defensive curse, but I just couldn't find a clear path to success with self-cast. I really wanted it to work, however intensify still being bugged as far as I know, gimping myself because I wanted to play unleash instead of spell echo for once, and the expensive investment that is additional projectiles has led me to the question of if I'm going to self-cast why would I use this skill over fireball

Niceuu

I really appreciate all the work you do for the game, and how professional you manage to be when responding to all the unnecessary hate.

I'm running Blazing Salvo and I'm enjoying it quite a bit. My only gripe is that the effectiveness of added damage seems a little low. I'm also not super in love with Pinpoint, although to be honest I usually don't like Intensity-based stuff so maybe that's just me.

The new Firestorm seems a little slow but I haven't used it much. Even if the big fireball fell just a bit faster I think that I'd like it.

Again, thanks for all you do and stay safe!

on "The Rogue Harbour Waypoint" - why not do it like sarn or forest encampment, rogue harbor does look like a wider act 2 town. The problem with running would be worse in sarn if the waypoint is located near the town entrance, the issue with encampment would be having to walk up those stairs, tho not really big, since the town is small. The dock in rogue shouldve just been used for the first entry, like act 6's town. Waypoints for towns/bases shouldve been somewhere easily accessible for quick movements, ie the town waypoints tend to be near npcs that you can sell shit to.

portal movement can you move portal like to a different location than from where you spawn i keep clicking to move and i had a couple of instances where i would click portal and would leave heist.

So I guess let us know when more of the crashes have been fixed, kinda pointless to run heists until then, not a lot of fun to be moments away from finishing and having it all just disappear with no way to recover it.

New skill feedback: Void Sphere

I just want to comment on this one aspect of the skill: Corpse removal. Maybe it's by design, but corpse removal by Void Sphere doesn't do what other corpse removal skills do: preventing on-death effects. It doesn't remove porcupine spike explosions, nor does it prevent monsters from casting corpse explosion.

Maybe it's working as intended, but it's still disappointing.